Welcome to Wednesday Word, a monthly linkup for everyone, not just health and fitness bloggers. On the first Wednesday of every month you will have a single word prompt to write about. Let your imagination run free and share with your readers your interpretation of that word, or simply use it as inspiration for your post. Today’s word is development… I’d love to have you link up, and if you do, please remember to follow my six simple rules.

 

Development
The act, process, or result of developing;
The development of new ideas
~ Merriam-Webster

 

There’s been quite the development of training plans since I ran my first marathon in 1997. Back then I couldn’t Google training plans to see what I liked, so I depended on my friend Miles to give me a xeroxed copy of the New York Road Runners Club’s New York City Marathon Training Schedule which had been developed in 1991.

With a 40-mile per week base, I jumped right into the veteran plan making two adjustments – I added mileage to three of my long runs as you can see below; and on Wednesdays, I met Miles and the guys at the track for interval training.

 

Hitting my time goal and BQ’ing at my first marathon confirmed that the training schedule worked for me and it became my go to plan for at least my first five marathons. After collecting running books and learning about the importance of adding tempo runs, hill repeats, and intervals (something I already understood and practiced) to my training cycles, I switched track intervals to Tuesdays and turned Thursday’s miles into tempo runs. I followed my newly developed training plan, or a slightly adjusted version, for the rest of my marathon career, cutting back on my weekly mileage as I got older.

As the marathon coach for Worldgate Sport & Heath, I was responsible for developing training plans for my runners. Each runner received a custom schedule for each day of their sixteen to twenty week training cycle based on their weekly base mileage coming into the program, their overall fitness level, their fitness goals, and their race goals; and each of those training plans was based loosely on my tried and true NYRRC schedule. Everyone received at least one day of cross training, a minimum of one day of complete rest, and for those already strength training, I included lifting into their plan. We met as a group on Tuesdays for track intervals which were adjusted according their fitness level, and again on Saturdays for our long runs.

 

And as a follow-up to that New York Road Runners Club’s free 1991 New York City Marathon Training Schedule that I depended on for several years, my friend Kim just told me about NYRRC’s newest interactive training plan which starts at $49.99 and goes up to $999.99 (lots of added VIP perks with this plan). From a single sheet of paper to an interactive plan, and from free to affordable to quite expensive, the NYRRC has kept up with the times and developed quite an enticing plan for today’s runner.

 

How do you develop your training plans? 

 

Grab My Button!

Deb Runs
 



 

Next Month’s Wednesday Word: Breakthrough